We finished our years racing with the OYC Holiday Regatta. While a lot smaller than many of the other events we took part in my expectation was for some competitive racing in a mixed fleet and it turned out that way.
Going into race one I wasn't sure who our competition was exactly. Could be Kookaburra, a rapidly improving Shock 35, our old Nemesis Pole Dancer as J/120 or perhaps Powerpoint, a Henderson 30 that I crew on (Joe Cramer races on Kraken too and has been instrumental in our improvements over the last few years).
It was going going to be a mixture of crew, courses and conditions that would push the favor one way or another overlaid with tactical goodness, or badness. After a long week watching light air predictions (Powerpoint would romp all over us) I woke up happy to see it up to 10-14kts - enough to neutralize their light air prowess somewhat without being too much to have Pole Dancer steaming over the top of us.
But going into that first race it was hard to tell the main competition. We got a good start, on top of Powerpoint, nicely to leeward of Kookaburra and with PoleDancer forced to tack away to the potentially favored right. What to do? Pinch up in front of Kookaburra to establish that position while keeping enough speed to make sure Powerpoint couldn't get in front of us and hope the right shift didn't happen. Tack on layline, first around the mark and force the reaching powerpoint take the long route around us and waste enough time.
Wasn't sure we did get enough of a bite at them and didn't get an accurate time difference count but turned out we did! First.
And starting to get a feel for the competition now.
Second race was a long random leg race. Horrible start.
Horrible.
I blame John Sivak for not being on board. His starts have become somewhat legendary.
Problem being he wasn't on board.
Only nice thing, Powerpoint started dead last after problems. So we worked on getting a route out of trouble and staying ahead of PP for as long as possible. A lift (a 10 degree righty) to the first mark didn't quite give us a lucky freeby but we weren't too far out of contention at the rounding and then got a lucky break hoping for more right as the sea breeze exerted more influence and getting it. At the leeward mark we'd overtaken Kookaburra (just) and were close behind PD with PP a little ahead of them. Two legs hard on the wind followed and we all held station then a final downwind to the finish and with a quick recovery from a spinnaker sheet rigged the wrong way kept close behind the two faster boats.
Close enough, another 1st on corrected time. Pleasant surprise when results came out as we couldn't hear the finish times for the first two boats and thought we were probably second.
The last race caught us by surprise. Literally. I was down below looking at at spinnaker rip when Charlie called down that the horn was called and we were going into sequence. We just had time to get back past the committee boat and get the course. Running a bit early I did a big wiggle down behind Kookaburra and as I did so the horn went. My watch was fifteen seconds out! So rather than winning the boat end and getting a juicy blocking move on Powerpoint we found ourselves tacking out of trouble again. Third around the top mark we were closing down Kookaburra for second place but didn't quite get it, five seconds off in the end.
1,1,3 for the day and overall win (Powerpoint got 2,2,1 so we beat them on number of bullets).
With a nice favorable wind direction Wolfie and Aaron got to practice some spinnaker trim on the return to the harbor. Another bonus as I've been feeling bad about the lack of practice time put in this year. With our performance levels going up its actually proven harder to get people with less experience into the more nuanced roles, something that I hadn't expected.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Monday, December 4, 2017
Oh my poor sails - Hot Rum II
This last weekend we raced the second Hot Rum out of SDYC. Sadly missed the first but having fun in the series. 110-130 boats pitted against each other with course optimized pursuit starts over a short 14mile distance is always fun, or a little scary.
We're still working out the course - it has tidal flows and a big persistent shift across it. There are massive race traffic flow problems to deal with mixed with the occasional aircraft carrier....
For days preceding the race a local weather condition was shutting down the sea breeze but predictions remained consistent at about 10kts on the day of the race.
Morning of the race dawned clear and calm. Calm was interesting, the offshore breeze was already out of the picture. By the time I got to the boat at 10am it was approaching 10kts and from the NW. This could combine with a later sea breeze....
Our race start was 12:26:40. As we motored out to the course the breeze backed off and rotated north. Now it was looking light again. We crossed the line on the second and at the pin but slow. Two other 36.7s had jumped the gun and with them turning back we found ourself the lead boat of our group, with Melokia above us.
With the current behind us and a squeak of boat speed we keep this position and later gybed back into the current and consolidated. As we cleared Point Loma the fresher breeze started to kick in and the race changed personality... the first mark in this race is typically a reach gybing to a run but this time we found ourself deep with 16kts of building breeze gybing to a reach.
It was a fun reach! Gybing right at the mark we found our selves a bit below the mark. As I grew more confident in my lightweight spinnaker sheets ability to take the pressure we worked up to the mark, with boat speed between 8 and 10 kts. Fun times!!! I even whooped on a few waves though we weren't breaking free and surfing it felt good.
Kea, a 36.7 sailing with a larger masthead asym had been firmly behind on the first leg but once on the reach she was making trees on us. As I become more confident in the hardware I was working up, both to try and cut her off and to give my foredeck some down before the mark to get the kite down. In the end we didn't cut her off and rounded the second mark inches behind her transom (reverse positions to the last race of the last regatta).
Both of us were looking pretty good relative to the fleet though, with some space before the big boats got to us and smaller boats ahead.
We were flying a #1 and hadn't put battens in the #3. As we came back up the course the wind speed increased to 20kts and this proved costly. We also made some tactical mistakes (my fault). Having overstood the third mark I aimed at it but this allowed boats that had overstood even further to have the inside at the mark. This left us pinned and slow and in bumpy water and crappy air (and seriously overpowered... wind still increasing). It was a while before we could tack for cleaner air and meanwhile Kea had been inside at the mark, tacked and was stretching their lead.
Positives though in that there was no sign of the other 36.7s being near. This is a race where every boat you lose (that rolls you from behind) pushes you back towards the even faster boats behind them. Getting the early part right is critical and we'd got lucky there. Back at the bar it turned out there were a couple of blown spinnakers, and the two OCSs so that cleared out much of the fleet.
Back to us!
As we came into the pressure waves under Point Loma the gusts kept building. It was ugly, we were flogging our main and genoa a lot and wishing we had the #3 up. Perhaps we should have switched...
I saw 24kts TWS but wasn't really paying attention at the high points, simply trying to feather into them but maintain just enough pressure on the sails to keep our speed up.
Luckily lots of other boats were in the same situation. Later conversations had boats claiming they saw 30kts but I wonder if they were talking AWS not TWS. Many of us were completely over canvased.
As we passed the sub pens we had an encounter with a 47.7. They were moving fast on starboard and a duck would have meant a massive loss, if we could have even managed a bear away. To the left we had shallow water. I luffed hard until the last minute then flopped onto port and back again as soon as we could. It was painful and we lost a lot of ground - and then ended up in their dirt.
Shortly afterwards an F10 ran aground in the same place.
After this section the wind normally lightens and again it did. We'd been starting to look quite good against Kea until the El Sueno (the 47.7) incident but had lost them. Working the left side of the course though we start picking off boats that had gone right. Kea came back in sight, no chance of beating them but the 2 minutes they crossed the line ahead of us was about felt about right.
We picked of a 40.7, a F10 and some other misc boats in that last stretch but had lost a huge amount on the first half of the upwind. Eventual result was 53rd.
Pictures from da woody None of the exciting bits though (barring that Cat starting to flip - full sequence in the link - is that Jay Davis of OYC going for a swim?)
We're still working out the course - it has tidal flows and a big persistent shift across it. There are massive race traffic flow problems to deal with mixed with the occasional aircraft carrier....
For days preceding the race a local weather condition was shutting down the sea breeze but predictions remained consistent at about 10kts on the day of the race.
Morning of the race dawned clear and calm. Calm was interesting, the offshore breeze was already out of the picture. By the time I got to the boat at 10am it was approaching 10kts and from the NW. This could combine with a later sea breeze....
Our race start was 12:26:40. As we motored out to the course the breeze backed off and rotated north. Now it was looking light again. We crossed the line on the second and at the pin but slow. Two other 36.7s had jumped the gun and with them turning back we found ourself the lead boat of our group, with Melokia above us.
With the current behind us and a squeak of boat speed we keep this position and later gybed back into the current and consolidated. As we cleared Point Loma the fresher breeze started to kick in and the race changed personality... the first mark in this race is typically a reach gybing to a run but this time we found ourself deep with 16kts of building breeze gybing to a reach.
It was a fun reach! Gybing right at the mark we found our selves a bit below the mark. As I grew more confident in my lightweight spinnaker sheets ability to take the pressure we worked up to the mark, with boat speed between 8 and 10 kts. Fun times!!! I even whooped on a few waves though we weren't breaking free and surfing it felt good.
Kea, a 36.7 sailing with a larger masthead asym had been firmly behind on the first leg but once on the reach she was making trees on us. As I become more confident in the hardware I was working up, both to try and cut her off and to give my foredeck some down before the mark to get the kite down. In the end we didn't cut her off and rounded the second mark inches behind her transom (reverse positions to the last race of the last regatta).
Both of us were looking pretty good relative to the fleet though, with some space before the big boats got to us and smaller boats ahead.
We were flying a #1 and hadn't put battens in the #3. As we came back up the course the wind speed increased to 20kts and this proved costly. We also made some tactical mistakes (my fault). Having overstood the third mark I aimed at it but this allowed boats that had overstood even further to have the inside at the mark. This left us pinned and slow and in bumpy water and crappy air (and seriously overpowered... wind still increasing). It was a while before we could tack for cleaner air and meanwhile Kea had been inside at the mark, tacked and was stretching their lead.
Positives though in that there was no sign of the other 36.7s being near. This is a race where every boat you lose (that rolls you from behind) pushes you back towards the even faster boats behind them. Getting the early part right is critical and we'd got lucky there. Back at the bar it turned out there were a couple of blown spinnakers, and the two OCSs so that cleared out much of the fleet.
Back to us!
As we came into the pressure waves under Point Loma the gusts kept building. It was ugly, we were flogging our main and genoa a lot and wishing we had the #3 up. Perhaps we should have switched...
I saw 24kts TWS but wasn't really paying attention at the high points, simply trying to feather into them but maintain just enough pressure on the sails to keep our speed up.
Luckily lots of other boats were in the same situation. Later conversations had boats claiming they saw 30kts but I wonder if they were talking AWS not TWS. Many of us were completely over canvased.
As we passed the sub pens we had an encounter with a 47.7. They were moving fast on starboard and a duck would have meant a massive loss, if we could have even managed a bear away. To the left we had shallow water. I luffed hard until the last minute then flopped onto port and back again as soon as we could. It was painful and we lost a lot of ground - and then ended up in their dirt.
Shortly afterwards an F10 ran aground in the same place.
After this section the wind normally lightens and again it did. We'd been starting to look quite good against Kea until the El Sueno (the 47.7) incident but had lost them. Working the left side of the course though we start picking off boats that had gone right. Kea came back in sight, no chance of beating them but the 2 minutes they crossed the line ahead of us was about felt about right.
We picked of a 40.7, a F10 and some other misc boats in that last stretch but had lost a huge amount on the first half of the upwind. Eventual result was 53rd.
Pictures from da woody None of the exciting bits though (barring that Cat starting to flip - full sequence in the link - is that Jay Davis of OYC going for a swim?)
SDYC Hot Rums
We missed the first Hot Rum but had a couple of fun races, made some big mistakes to learn from and come back stronger. Got beaten by some good boats and beat some good boats and had a LOT of fun (also had some nice hot rum).
Hardly any pictures from race II which blew 25kts and we sailed with our #1 headsail (never again). Great downwind hitting 10kts but funnily enough horrible upwind to a respectable 53rd (funny getting that result and looking backwards at the 70 boats you beat - also was 4/22 in class).
Next race was lighter. We were on an off the spinnaker on the first leg then deep and light with our heavy wind kite up on the second then a steady upwind. I argued John into some tactical mistakes (I get jumpy, and want to do things to improve the situation and in this race should have kept quiet) but we sailed smooth and fast for the conditions with a lot of good communication on board to come in a respectable 29th (3rd in class).
Best Recipe This Year
A sliced lemon added the little zing to the hot rum the previous race's batch had missed (I'd gone with ginger the previous race but either didn't put enough in or it was stale or something).
Ingredients (enough for one Hot Rum per crew with 9 people on board):
Photos from DaWoody (or look at all 1700 of his pictures)
Hardly any pictures from race II which blew 25kts and we sailed with our #1 headsail (never again). Great downwind hitting 10kts but funnily enough horrible upwind to a respectable 53rd (funny getting that result and looking backwards at the 70 boats you beat - also was 4/22 in class).
Next race was lighter. We were on an off the spinnaker on the first leg then deep and light with our heavy wind kite up on the second then a steady upwind. I argued John into some tactical mistakes (I get jumpy, and want to do things to improve the situation and in this race should have kept quiet) but we sailed smooth and fast for the conditions with a lot of good communication on board to come in a respectable 29th (3rd in class).
Best Recipe This Year
A sliced lemon added the little zing to the hot rum the previous race's batch had missed (I'd gone with ginger the previous race but either didn't put enough in or it was stale or something).
Ingredients (enough for one Hot Rum per crew with 9 people on board):
- 96oz apple cider
- 2 teaspoon all spice
- Cinnamon sticks, 3-4
- 1 thinly sliced lemon
- 3 tart apples studded with cloves (~12 cloves per apple)
- A cup of brown sugar
- Boil for about 30 minutes until the apples are mushy then decant into a very good thermos so it's still hot when you mix with rum to taste at the end of the race.
Photos from DaWoody (or look at all 1700 of his pictures)
Started at the pin end and raised a kite as soon as we could to get separation.
Not quite holding the kite as the wind shifted back left. Think that;s Jonathan's shadow at the bow ready for headsail up.
Dropped kite to make the first mark
Long slow downwind with the wrong kite up
Reaching to Mark III - Light and Tight
Back upwind
Looking for a lane to tack into and finish
And finishing
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